I recently got an iPad as well as a Kindle, and now carry roughly 60 digital books around in my handbag at all times. The upshot of this is that I’ve spent far more on books in the last two months than I have in the past two years. I’m reading an awful lot more than any time since my degree. If someone recommends a book, I can start reading it the second we finish our coffee.
Now, instead of feeling guilty about not reading, I’m feeling guilty about what I’m reading. For full disclosure, my degree was in English Literature, so three full years of my life were devoted to reading fiction, the theory of fiction and the political, social and historical background of that fiction. But now, whenever I start reading a novel, I panic. I think about all the books I’m not reading. How little I know about economics. That everyone knows more about the Middle East than I do. How I might come across as less of a pillock if I read more Chomsky. I think a lot of this is to do with growing up, and realising how little I know, and identifying gaps in my knowledge. This article sums up a lot of my fears. But it still niggles. I asked Twitter, and my followers are always super-erudite. Here are some responses, storifyed.
And a few here:
But what has fiction taught you? Is fiction escapism, or the most effective way of examining the human condition? What novels have taught you more than non-fiction?
Middlemarch has definitely taught me more than anything or anyone else I’ve ever encountered. With the possible exception of my wife. It’s about recognising a range of different, valid, perceptions of the same thing; about recognising your own traits as human and comic rather than crazed and shameful; about the importance and the mundanity of life, relationships, possessions, and history.
Yes, to Middlemarch! Read it when I was 22 and it taught me an enormous amount. Mary Garth was also such a refreshing character.
(And Cat’s Eye has taught me more than anything or anyone else, apart from my wife, about myself.)
Hurray for Cat’s Eye. I re-read it every 5 years or so and it always has different things to tell me.
Non fiction books provided us with information and, sometimes, theories. Good literary fiction tells us how to process that. There are also, of course, many books that span the gap – particularly erudite pieces of fiction and non-fiction powered by compulsive narrative and richly drawn characters. Indeed, the strict separation of fiction and non-fiction is very much a modern idea (and rather a resrictive way of looking at the world, never mind at books).
Of course it’s important, as a journalist, to be well versed in the basics of history, economics, geography etc.; but I fail to see how anyone can expect to produce truly useful writing without having read the likes of Eco, Marquez, Camus, Joyce, Hogg, Le Guin or Gide.
Your first point nails it, I think. I can read extensively about the history and politics of South Africa, but reading novels like The Life and Times of Michael K exposes why it was so terrible, because of the social, psychological and well, *human* cost.
I think you can also justify terrible things by looking at things from a purely theoretical perspective? We can slash public spending and tout an economic argument that supports this. But art and literature conveys the social toll.
Fiction can help make non-fiction topics more accessible or playful.
For example, I found Animal Farm to be extremely useful for understanding the beginnings of the Soviet Era.
If you only validate yourself by what other think you will never feel validated. Read everything. Enjoy everything you read as much as you find possible. And stuff people who know more than you about Chomsky!
I studied post-colonial theory through the fictional writing of African authors such as Achebe, Armah, Ba, Merachera etc.. It was perfect, I learnt history and modern thought thru everyday characters.
I feel deprived if I go too long without fiction but sometimes have similar concerns about “useful” reading so last year I compromised with a run of novels with a political dimension – The Grapes of Wrath, Darkness at Noon, Dos Passos’s USA, Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, Didion’s Democracy, Robert Stone’s A Flag for Sunrise. I found all of them way more rewarding and enlightening than Chomsky.